Harnessed Rhythm (1936) User Reviews

Turf Trotters

[Ron Oliver · 10/10 · 12 November 2001]

An MGM SPORTS PARADE Short Subject.

The training of a young trotter is observed from the time he's a colt until he competes in his first Grand Circuit race.

This interesting little film explains the basics of harness horse racing, with emphasis on the trotter. The difference between diagonal verses lateral striding is discussed and the various leg & body accouterments are shown.

This was one of the first directing assignments for Jacques Tourneur, who would later make his mark with stylish horror films at RKO. Pete Smith supplies the quirky narration.

Often overlooked or neglected today, the one and two-reel short subjects were useful to the Studios as important training grounds for new or burgeoning talents, both in front & behind the camera. The dynamics for creating a successful short subject was completely different from that of a feature length film, something like writing a topnotch short story rather than a novel. Economical to produce in terms of both budget & schedule and capable of portraying a wide range of material, short subjects were the perfect complement to the Studios' feature films.

Well done bit on horse racing with Pete Smith SPOILERS

[ksf-2 · 8/10 · 16 October 2014]

SPOILERS below, mateys. Harnessed Rhythm, with narration by Pete Smith, tells the story of a young horse, Dixie Dan, raised for racing. The narrator describes the different types of races, and the different types of trotters, ie which horses race with diagonal hooves in unison versus horses with the two left legs forward, then the two right legs forward. We also see some mis-haps, such as horse-shoes that come off mid-race, and even a runaway horse, with no-one in the harness. Quite well done, for those of us not familiar with the different types of racing and horses used. Narrator Pete Smith was nominated many times for his educational short films, and won two Oscars, shortly after this film. He seemed to have just the right sense of humor, mixed in with helpful information, back in the days of little travel and hard to come by information, WAY before the days of the internet and wikipedia. This looks like one of the earlier works directed by Jacques Tourneur after coming to the U.S. Fun to watch, if you can catch this on Turner Classics between films.

Fun Smith Short

[Michael_Elliott · 8 June 2013]

Harnessed Rhythm (1936)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Pete Smith narrates this MGM short about Dixie Dan, a horse that we see from the age of three months all the way up to three years as he becomes a champion harness racer. As you'd expect from a short narrated by Smith, there's quite a bit of comic tone thrown into this but for the most part you get a pretty good idea of what it takes to get a horse ready for racing. We see how they break the horse to get it prepared for racing and then we get to see what it takes to train him. We also get a slow motion look at the harness itself and how it's constructed to make sure the horse races the right way. I'm going to guess that some animal lovers might not agree with this but there's certainly nothing graphic or harmful here. For the most part I found this to be an entertaining entry in the Sports Parade series, which kept up a good pace for its 10-minutes. The film manages to have a couple good laughs, a great bit of educational purpose and the finale gives us a pretty exciting race.